1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a message processing device, a message processing system, and a message management method, for processing a message transmitted from a terminal, and a storage medium in which a message management program is stored.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, the following technology has been easily realized. That is, an electronic mail can be transmitted to an individual receiver by a mail system such as a personal-computer communications system, a UNIX system or the like, and the same mail can be transmitted to a plurality of receivers.
There is a case where, when a plurality of members cooperatively do business, a leader transmits mails to the members to confirm whether or not the members have completed the business activity, in order to determine the business progress states of the members. In such a case, each member of the group prepares a mail for reporting whether or not his or her business activity has been completed, and transmits this mail to the leader. The leader reads the mails from all the members, and determines whether or not the business of each member has been completed. In such a case, the number of mails to be read increases as the number of members increases, and so the readers job increases.
Further, in order that a member other than the leader determines the progress states of other members, he or she should send mails to the other members to confirm their progress states in a fashion similar to that mentioned above, and should receive their responses. Therefore, the process of transmitting and receiving mails between members becomes complicated.
The displaying of received mails as a list has been conventionally performed, but in the conventional method, only a list is displayed.
There are many cases in which, when a mail is transmitted, a sender wishes to know whether or not the receiver confirms the contents of the mall. In a conventional electronic mail system, however, the sender can determine whether or not the receiver opened the mail but cannot determine whether or not the receiver actually confirms the contents of the mail. In a personal computer communications system or the like, when a receiver reads out a mail which has been stored in a host computer, a sender is informed that this mall has been opened. According to this method, even if the terminal provided on a receiving side automatically reads out a mail from a host computer, this mail is handled as opened. Therefore, a sender cannot determine whether or nota receiver actually confirms the contents of a mail.
Conventionally, the processing flow of business is transmitted by mail. However, a process of displaying the list of mails including a formatted message about business and that of a mail including a non-formatted message to an individual receiver, on a same display, thereby managing the mails, has not yet been performed.